Regardless,
later that day I sit at my desk, a blank piece of paper before me. No words
come forth, just nuances of what was and what could be. The fullness I felt
surrounded by trees and moss, stone and water―one of connection and
interdependence― eludes me now that I sit between four walls. Let me amend
that: I can invoke the feelings, I just cannot write them down; I have not the
language.
How can one
translate unworldly messages?
I imagine
it’s a similar dilemma to those writers who translate the classics. I have a
Russian friend who extols the works of Pushkin. When she first told me of this
famed muse, I wanted to feel what she did―and continues to feel― from his
words. I wanted to dance to his poetry, to revel in his verse. I read one translation
and then another and was left flat. Not knowing Russian, I gave up. How can one
translate beauty?
That said, I
know it’s been done. From Homer to Goethe, the Vedas to Rumi, beauty has been
passed down the ages through multiple hands. What magic must a writer weave to capture what
truly cannot be possessed?
It is said
that Milton had a muse that visited him each night. Come morning he would
recite new verses of Paradise Lost to
his scribe having lost his own sight some time before. When I am in the forest,
my muse is present and lyrical but resents the intrusion of pen and paper. He
demands my absolute adherence to the present moment. As a result I have stopped
trying to write out-of-doors. But that doesn’t quite explain why I cannot write
of my experiences at home.
I look at
this unblemished page of white that lies before me―this thin layer of fibre
that once was tree, a being born of the earth, blessed by the sky. I believe
that all that was once alive retains a memory of their ancestry―the wooden
table, hardwood floor and the walls of our houses remember how once they
towered above and kept community with other trees. Why not paper? Does this
scrap of white, torn and bleached from the core of what once was phloem and
xylem, bark and leaf—reaching down to the earth’s core and upwards towards the
light—remember from whence she came? So easily I move to a gendered pronoun, so
soon, I give it back to life, yet, what life do I give it? Is this paper, née
tree, waiting for my stillness in order to open herself up to my pen, to fill
what once was flowing with sap―her life blood―with my blood? For is that not
what I want to write? The blood of my beingness? My truth?
And how can
I write my truth about my connection to nature without considering our shared
past? My settler ancestors came in with saws and shovels, violence and
dynamite. My grandfather was a logger; my father a blaster. They did not log
the slopes I now transverse but countless others did and now I have paper. At what
price? Have I paid it? And if not, does this piece of paper await redemption
for being torn out of the earth―out of her home, her life―before granting me
the permission to write such interpersonal prose?
What can I,
a writer, offer this page of white? If this piece of fibre remembers her roots
as a once formidable tree, bared to the elements of sun, rain, wind and … destruction,
what words can I write that would make up for all she once was? Her kin in the
forest speak words that I can only feel and not write. Is it me that resists
writing her story or is it her? Is this revenge or a pull on me to go deeper?
When I walk
in the forest I prefer the early morning when there is only myself and the
breaking dawn. Even the birds are quiet, waiting for the first hint of light to
awaken their lyricism. I place my feet with care, avoiding roots and rocks
while I slowly empty my mind. From past experience I know if I walk with
intent, with the soul quest of connecting―becoming one with the forest― I fail.
I must let go of my agendas, let previous conversations, happenings and
happenstance wind through and out of me. When I do that―when I let go―the world
opens up and, ironically, I connect. All it takes is an inner stillness: no
itinerary, no enquiring mind, just a passive willingness to receive.
Sitting at
my de facto desk in the local coffee shop I go inward. As I exhale I allow my
breath to sink deep into the earth. With each breath I release there is an
inexorable downward pull. I feel the stool beneath me and the floor beneath
that as my imagined roots travel down my legs and into the ground below. Calm comes over me as I empty out but still
the words don’t appear.
It is not so
easy to let go of an agenda when writing is involved.
The thing
is, I do write. For seven years I have written a weekly blog. I’ve written
numerous articles and have even been published but never have I found the
formula for easing (squeezing?) words out of my muse. What I have discovered is
my muse doesn’t like pressure, although will perform under such when needed,
and doesn’t like expectations nor equations. My muse is his own person. That
said, my muse likes to be acknowledged for who he is, a young lad full of creativity,
spark, generosity and, ironically, hope.
My creative muse
is my uncle Fred. He died many years ago, 1932, in fact—death by drowning. He
was only eleven. I know very little about him but what I do comes from letters
my Nana wrote to my Grandpa while he was away in the logging camps: Uncle Fred
wore glasses, went to school, needed clothes―Nana wasn’t a big writer. But from
newspaper clippings I also know that one day in late June he and his friend, Edgar,
towed his wagon full of boy stuff down to the beach and didn’t come back. Two other
kids drowned that day. Those knowledgeable in the ways and whims of the
waterway in which he died speculate it was a riptide. His voice, his youthful
expression, cut short by a downward pull of water. What would he be, or say,
for that matter, if he was alive today? What words would he have owned as his
own before they drifted away towards the ocean? Are my words his? Am I
channeling the dead, being presumptuous or just fanciful?
While my limbic
system would disagree my neo-cortex suggests the latter. My muse, however I
honour and hold court for him, is most likely a metaphor. Much like this piece
of paper I write about. In reality I sit at a computer looking for excuses why
I sometimes can and sometimes cannot write.
But metaphor is a large part of my writing, in fact, my life: reality is
a slippery eel on a concrete slope. How’s that for a metaphor? But that is my
truth. It has always been my challenge figuring out what is real in a literal
world. So, if indeed, this paper/computer screen is awaiting the blood of my
beingness I present my sketchy self. Is it enough?
But perhaps
that is the wrong question. I began this essay by asking why I couldn’t write
of my experiences in the woods. How I felt I had no words for the feelings
invoked by the forest and how certain types of beauty cannot be translated… at
least by me. I’ve pointed fingers at skill and ancestral guilt, my muse and a
tenuous grasp of reality. This morning I woke to a fragment of a poem. It’s a
piece that’s been composting in the back of my mind for several weeks. The poem
completed itself within hours.
Does one
still dream when they are ordinary?
Do the stars
still sing in their quietest moments?
Do trees
offer poetry and the stones―
words of
wisdom?
Can one still
believe when they finally understand
they are not
special?
It is easy
to fall into the trap of thinking that one must be gifted to write beauty and
that only one of such creative expertise has the right to be acknowledged and
appreciated—one must be seen and heard before they count, yes? I fought for years to be seen as someone with
that gift only to discover that I am not that special. It was, indeed, quite
the downfall until I read the following dialogue between two characters in Erin
Morgenstern’s Night Circus.
“But I am not … special … not the way
they are. I’m not anyone important.”
“I know … You’re not destined or
chosen, I wish I could tell you that you were if that would make it easier, but
it’s not true. You’re in the right place at the right time, and you care enough
to do what needs to be done. Sometimes that’s enough.”
Despite my
pedestrian existence and my inability to express the essence of what I
experience in the forest, I care about the trees and stone, the moss and fern.
I care about relationship and interdependence, humanity’s hopes and fears. And
while I do not always do them justice, I do my best to write of them—to express
their essences and their impact upon me, and how my existence impacts them. It
may not be Pushkin or Goethe but in the end, perhaps that is enough.
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